12. "By such penances endured for a time,—by the higher they attain heaven, by the lower the world of men, by the path of pain they eventually dwell in happiness,—pain, they say, is the root of merit."

18. Seeing his resolve Brighu, the chief of the hermitage, said : " Prince, brave indeed is thy purpose, who, young as thou art, having pondered thoroughly between heaven and liberation have made up your mind for liberation, ye are indeed brave!

19. "If what you have said is thy settled purpose go quickly to Vindhyakoshtha ; the Muni Arada lives there who has gained an insight into absolute bliss.

20. " From him thou wilt learn the path but as I foresee, this purpose of thine will go further, after having studied his theory."

21. Gautama thanked him, and having saluted the company of sages he departed ; the hermits also, having duly performed to him all the rites of courtesy, entered again into the ascetic grove.

§ 2. Study of Sankhya

1. Leaving the Ashram of Brighu, Gautama started to find the abode of Arada Kalam.

2. Arada Kalam was staying at Vaishali. Gautama went thither. On reaching Vaishali he went to his Ashram.

3. Approaching Arada Kalam, he said: " I wish to be initiated into your doctrine and discipline."

4. Thereupon Arada Kalam said :" You are welcome. Such is my doctrine that an intelligent man like you in no long time may of himself comprehend, realise and attain my teaching and abide by it.

20. The technique was not to breathe but to reach concentration by stopping breathing.

21. Gautama learned this technique. When he tried concentration by stopping breathing he found that piercing sounds used to come out of his ears, and his head appeared to him to be pierced as though by a sharp pointed knife.

22. It was a painful process. But Gautama did not fail to master it. 23. Such was his training in the Samadhi Marga.

§ 4. Trial of Asceticism

1. Gautama had given a trial to theSankhya and Samadhi Marga. But he had left the Ashram of the Brighus without giving a trial to Asceticism.

2. He felt he should give it a trial and gain experience for himself so that he could speak authoritatively about it.

3. Accordingly Gautama went to the town of Gaya. From there he reconnoitred the surrounding country and fixed his habitation at Uruvela in the hermitage of Negari, the Royal Seer of Gaya, for practising asceticism. It was a lonely and solitary place on the banks of the river Nairanjana for practising asceticism.

4. At Uruvela he found the five Parivrajakas whom he had met at Rajagraha and who had brought news of peace. They too were practising asceticism.

5. The mendicants saw him there and approached him to take them with him. Gautama agreed.

6. Thereon they served him reverently, abiding as pupils under his orders, and were humble and compliant.

7. The austerities and self-mortification practised by Gautama were of the severest sort.

8. Sometimes he visited two but not more than seven houses a day and took at each only two but not more than seven morsels.

9. He lived on a single saucer of food a day, but not more than seven saucers.

10. Sometimes he had but one meal a day, or one every two days, and so on, upto once every seven days, or only once a fortnight, on a rigid scale of rationing.

11. As he advanced in the practice of asceticism his sole diet was herbs gathered green, or the grain of wild millets and paddy, or snippets hide, or water-plants, or the red powder round rice-grains within the husk or the discarded scum of rice on the boil, or the flour of oilseeds.

12. He lived on wild roots and fruit, or on windfalls only.

13. His raiment was of hemp or hempen mixture of cerements of rags from the dust-heap, of bark, of the black antelope's pelt either whole or split down the middle, of grass, of strips of bark or wood, hair of men or animals woven into a blanket, or of owl's wings.

14. He plucked out the hair of his head and the hair of his beard, never quitted the upright for the sitting posture, squatted and never rose up, moving only squatting.

15. After this wise, in diverse fashions, be lived to torment and to torture his body—to such a length in asceticism did he go.

16. To such a length in loathliness did he go that there became accumulated on his body the dirt and filth for years till it dropped off by itself.

17. He took up his abode in the awesome depths of the forest, depths so awesome that it was reputed that none but the senseless could venture without his hair standing on end.

18. When the cold season brought chill wintry nights, then it was that in the dark half of the months he dwelt by night in the open air and in the dark thicket by day.